


Heavenless

by Kount_Xero



Category: Ginger Snaps (2000 2004)
Genre: Canon Extension, Complete, Loneliness, The Curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 13:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 58
Words: 14,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kount_Xero/pseuds/Kount_Xero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brigitte runs away from home right after Ginger's death, and with a curse of her own to figure out, she is alone and heavenless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Heavenless" is actually the first Ginger Snaps fanfic I ever wrote. I wanted to explore the universe of Ginger Snaps, which, say what you will about it but, has a very consistent lore. I wanted to bridge the gap between the first and second movies. The main problem is, I didn't learn until a month ago that there was supposed to be a year-long gap between the movies. I don't take that to heart, as the curse claimed Ginger completely in 28 days, and no treatment takes a year to show fault. So anyway, this, I consider to be part of the canon, more or less.
> 
> I do sometimes use song names, and in one chapter ("...And in September, Father") one line from the song, but other than that, please enjoy and please don't forget to leave a comment or two. Thank you so very much.

It took Brigitte quite a while to realize that the first rays of daylight were breaking through to the basement.  It was a state of non-dark outside of the room that she could see, not quite light but lighter in comparison to the luminosity of the pale lamps in their secluded room, the room that they called their grave.

Underneath her was the strange shape of Ginger’s lycanthrope form, all muscle, a pure brutal mass... cold and alien.  Sticking out of the gut of what once had been her sister was the knife.

Daylight, she thought.  It seemed simple enough a concept, but her mind just couldn’t wrap itself around it.  Daylight.  Day.  A new day.  Tomorrow, no, wait, it was today now.  What once was tomorrow was now today.

A day, first of many, without Ginger.


	2. Connotations

Brigitte’s shocked mind, numb still, resorted to connotations of the day to keep track.  It meant light outside.  Responsibilities for the adults, jobs to go to, things to do.  Chores and other slave labor activities reserved for children.  School.  Classes.  It meant life outside.

Divided against life as they knew it was where Brigitte was.  But wait...

Day wasn’t safe.  Day wasn’t safe at all – it meant neighbors, it meant people who’d notice they were missing, it meant people who might look for them.  How was she going to explain all this? How could she even hope to – could she even _hope_ to explain any of it? And who would believe her? The only two people who could testify in her favor were Pam, and the corpse in the other room, the taste of whose blood was still fresh in her mouth.

A wild animal in her room, a corpse in the hallway... murder and an unexplained, weird event.  Blood all over the walls, struggle.  Knife, blood, evidence, case, jail.

What the hell was she going to do?

One option, really.  Bail.


	3. Scissors

The room had suddenly become very small, and for the first time, Brigitte was aware of how deeply she and Ginger had buried themselves.  The place felt like a tomb.  Their beds were coffins, the photographs taped to the walls with black electrical tape, tombstones – depicting their various deaths.  None of it compared to the reality of it.

But, no time to dwell.  She needed to go.

Brigitte stripped off of her clothes and tossed them to a corner.  She had to go, yes. She didn’t have to go with blood all over her to Bailey Downs streets in broad daylight.  She went to the bathroom.  Turning on the cold water, she washed all the blood off of her hands.  She looked up and saw herself, naked, her eyes blank and her face frozen.  She could’ve laughed at the reflection, but she didn’t quite remember how to.

Blood on her hair, coating some of it, but thankfully not all.  She didn’t have time for a bath.  She clocked the pair of scissors lying by the sink, with lockets of white hair still sort of attached to them.

No choice.  Her hair had never been all that great anyway.


	4. Hallucinating

She went back into the room.  There, frozen in the state she had put her, Ginger’s corpse was waiting, glazed over eyes staring into the distance.  It was an object of the abstract for Brigitte, full of implicit meaning and innuendo in its silence.  Half-remembered ideas and half-forgotten memories all finding embodiment in the hollow shell of a lycanthropic form.

Lycanthrope.  Shit.  She had forgotten about the monkshood syringe.  She circled around the corpse and climbed through Ginger’s bed to look for it.  Lying in a small pool of blood was the syringe, with the needle intact and monkshood essence still in it.  The purple liquid just... safe and sound, waiting.

Brigitte’s hand was halfway through when Sam’s voice stopped her.

_See, that’s a bad idea, because there is no way to match for metabolism, body weight... how would you know?_

Brigitte turned to the door.  There he was.  Wearing that same shirt as his corpse, which she knew to be very near.  She blinked a few times, forcing herself to focus.  He was still there.

Great. Everything, and now she was hallucinating.  Seeing ghosts.

She didn’t have time for this.

Brigitte grabbed the syringe.  She’d figure it out later.

 _About half ought to do it, though._ Sam’s ghost was speaking, _Consider McCardy.  Twice your weight, easy._

“Shut up.  I’ll figure it out later.  Right now I need to get the fuck out of here.”

_Go, then.  Stop hallucinating and go._


	5. The Ship of Pills and Needed Things

Brigitte grabbed her all-purpose military bag and stuffed it full of things she presumed she would need.  Clothes, no dresses or skirts but jeans, a few t-shirts, underwear and sweaters.  Her notebook, in which she kept broken thoughts and stray memories, alongside half-assed werewolf research based on a few rented movies.  Make-up stuff for if she had to cover anything up, not that she knew what half of it did.  Ginger was the one who knew.

The monkshood syringe was in her pocket.  As an afterthought, she went to the bathroom to retrieve a bottle of painkillers.  Just in case.

She paced around the room, her eyes scanning everything at a frantic pace to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything.  She knew that if she did, she’d only find out about it miles from there, maybe days after the fact and it’d be useless... oh well.  Fuck it.

She grabbed her coat and headed for the door.


	6. Pretend the World Has Ended

Right on the threshold, something gave her pause.  What was it? Was it inability to leave the place that had served as a sanctum for her and Ginge for more than ten years? She turned around to look at the room.  No light besides the pale, dead rays emanating from the overhead lamps on the walls.  The place looked like a hurricane had ripped right through it, clothes, mattresses everywhere, along with blood and guts.  Right in the middle of the mess, like a reminder, was the hulking corpse of what once had been her sister.

Brigitte remembered that they played this game when they were small.  They’d pretend after coming home from school, that the world outside of their room had ended.  Some apocalyptic event had occurred just as they’d stepped into their shelter, killing everyone, destroying everything.  All of it.  And they were the only survivors.

No.  Scratch that.  _She_ was the only survivor now.  Because, Brigitte thought, the world _had_ ended after all, and the light that was gently bleeding through the curtains was a signal of the brand new, dead day.  Everything had ended and she had made it through.

Sole survivor.  That was her.


	7. Stop and Stare

Out in the hallway, like a patient friend, Sam’s corpse was waiting for her, painted red with the entire five plus quartz of blood he had had coursing through him... give or take the amount Ginger and she had lapped up.

He seemed so... broken.  Hollowed out.  Brigitte remembered her own fear about death, about killing herself or hoisting her body up from the ceiling – that strangers, or whoever would find her, would just stop and stare at her.  In disbelief maybe, or maybe in sheer shock, or acceptance or maybe just in a sense of sick, sick glee.

She didn’t think they’d feel what she felt as she slowly walked by him, unable to take her eyes off of the scene.  She felt that it was rude to stare, but she couldn’t not.  How could she? He was there, waiting for her, like he had waited... no.  No time to dwell.  Later, when she could afford it.

“I’m sorry.” She muttered.

Somewhere in her mind, she wished she had pennies to give him.


	8. Knew Better

Brigitte was almost out the door, the sleek, cold morning air rushing into the house through the opening.  This was it... or at least, she thought it was it until the phone started to ring.  Part of her said, let it ring, damn it, you don’t have time for this.  It could be the fucking cops for all you know.

But another part of her doubted that.  It was reflex, the phone was calling her.  Somebody was calling home, and at this hour, it could have been anyone.  Knowing that her curioisity would overcome her caution, Brigitte went to the phone and picked it up.

“Hello?”

_“Brigitte! It’s me!”_

Pam’s voice.  Brigitte called her mom only to her face.  She was a stranger to her.  Until last night, she didn’t even know Pam had any actual sense of motherhood besides going through the motions.

“Where are you?”

_“I’m at the police station.  Listen, can you call your father? I can’t reach him, and I might need some help.”_

Some help.  The notion sparked some part of her that had been asleep so far. She’d need money to make it out of Bailey Downs.  She didn’t have any, but she knew where she could get some.

“Mom, what’s the combination of the safe in your room?”

_“How do you know about that?”_

“It’s where you keep your savings, right? I heard daddy and you talking a few weeks ago.”

_“It’s not much, it’s a couple hundred at best.  Your dad kept his in the bank and I couldn’t save up much and...”_

“ _What_ is the combination?” __

“ _What do you need it for?”_

“Bail.” __

Just not yours, she wanted to say.  She knew better.

_“It’s 5-6-12.  Hurry!”_

“Thanks.”

Brigitte hung up and went to her parent’s bedroom.


	9. Out by Sixteen

There was something very lonely about the bus stop, and it wasn’t the fact that it was empty besides her and the people who worked there.  There was a preternatural silence to the wait.  It felt like the world was holding its breath, waiting for Brigitte’s bus to arrive.

She didn’t even remember now where it was going to go to.  She didn’t care about the destination at all.  Just moving faster than she could walk in the direction of a general “the fuck away from here” seemed good enough.  Besides, she needed to be somewhere else before she could use the monkshood extract – this early in the morning, they were suspicious enough of her without walking in on her shooting something-or-other up her arm.

So she crossed her arms and tapped her foot in what she believed was a rhythm, one hand clutching at the ticket and waited for the bus in what seemed to be a fault in time, slowing it down further and further with each passing moment.

When the hulking, rusty, grey mass of the bus made a turn into the garage, a turn she deemed simply miraculous given the vehicle’s intangible size, the sudden realization of what she was doing hit her. 

She could have laughed, if her lips weren’t frozen and it didn’t hurt to breathe.  There she was.  Out by sixteen.


	10. ...And in September, Father

Watching the road roll by outside of her window, Brigitte distinguished the odd details.  The lonely tree in the field.  The snow-covered roadside and the crunch of asphalt underneath them.  The heating of the bus, keeping her warm from the fierce cold outside.

All she could think about was, silver bullet, in a gun, to her head, the end.

Oh, wait.  What had Sam said? _My van did a pretty good job on it, without the benefit of silver bullets, so let’s just forget the Hollywood rules._

Okay, then.  Regular bullet. In a gun, to her head.  The end.

_Give me a gun and help me load it._


	11. The Will

In the end, it would just be her, her reasons and a loaded gun, but somehow, Brigitte thought it very fucked up that she’d just kill herself after surviving everything.

The will to life was a more powerful force than she had ever thought it could be.  She had always felt it, deep inside, every time Ginger brought up the subject of death – this tug in her chest, this knotted up feeling telling her that it wouldn’t do them good, it wouldn’t be a good thing to die.  She didn’t want to die, but Ginger had seemed so fixated on dying that it had seemed impossible for her to live.  She didn’t want to do it without her, couldn’t.

That was why Ginger had come up with the idea of killing themselves in photographs, or so Brigitte believed.  If Brigitte, only eight when the idea had sunken into her nine year old sister’s head, could get used to the idea of death or something like it, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard.  It was, more than anything, Ginger’s will to death that had been met with her own will to life.

As Brigitte watched the road roll by, she understood why that had been the case.

The idea itself was infallible, almost.  Brigitte had actually enjoyed killing herself over and over and over again, and documenting some of the deaths her sister had come up with.  It allowed her to experience something like death itself, or the bare idea of it, without actually touching it, without actually experiencing it.  Like touching herself.

Somehow, the thought brought her, almost naturally in that strange way, to Sam.


	12. Sam

_An eighth’s fifty._

A simple sentence that had started it all.  It kept repeating in her head as she sieved through the world, untouched by it.  The low rumble of the bus droning on in the background, Brigitte remembered that first sentence.  The tone of his voice, his sudden presence near her.  An eighth’s fifty.  She didn’t want any drugs.

_Then amscray._

She had wanted to.  In that moment, she really had wanted to.  She had no idea how to talk to him, how to make conversation.  She had never learned.  While Ginger was in the back of his truck, making nice with Jason and his asshole friends, there Brigitte was, stuck, trying to think of a way she could talk to this guy.

Sam.  Warm thought.

Oh, she wasn’t completely immune to desire.  Whether it was her warped sense of life (all pulse and beat and breath and sweat) or just an appreciation of the fact that others, no matter how disgusting, existed, she didn’t know.  But there were nights, however rare, when she wished there was someone.  Someone to perhaps teach her more of life, or join her in death, who knew? He, too, could be out by sixteen or dead in the scene.

He was dead in the scene.  He had passed sixteen by a long time ago.

Sam.  The memory of him, not fond, not remotely, but still, real and there, warm, reminded her.  Poor Sam.  He had believed her, stuck with her, stood by her, and now he was dead for it.  Brigitte did, after all was said and done, think he was like her in a way.  Hiding out in his greenhouse, keeping a distance from it all.  He was the casual weed man, nothing more.  He was nobody’s friend, nobody’s acquaintance.  Brigitte, too, didn’t know anything about him except for the fact that he, too, seemed to be burying himself slowly into the place he called home.

Sam.  The memory of him, maybe a bit fonder than she cared to admit, warm and hers, choked her on his absence.


	13. His Voice

Brigitte heard him speak and almost jumped.  But the very presence of the voice, real or hallucinated, filled her with a sense of comfort.  It was strange that he was the only one she could communicate with.

He had a question for her.

_Why do you give a shit?_

Looking at her pale reflection on the window, Brigitte saw his face next to hers.  His ghost was still with her, he was still keeping her company.  Still sticking with her.

_Why can’t you leave me behind?_

“Because you are dead and it’s my fault.” Brigitte said.


	14. Stupid Dream

The weariness of the evening took its toll and she slowly drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Brigitte dreamed of the greenhouse bash.  She was lost, trying to wade through crowds of masked dancers, each costume a different sort of macabre, each mask hiding another monster underneath.  Her pulse pounding in her ears, she was trying to push them all aside and get through, sort of sieve through the web of bodies.

Every two steps, somebody would pull her, try to tell her something, something irrelevant.  She pushed each gripping, insistent, persistent hand away and constantly murmured to herself words she barely heard over the music.

 _“Aconitum lycoctonum._ Northern Wolfsbane.  Poisonous to normal metabolisms, septic shock in normal adults.  _Aconitum napellus_ is an acceptable substitute.  Direct injection.  Direct injection.”

There was a syringe in her pocket that some of those who pulled her to one gathering or another wanted to see.  She couldn’t show it to them.  She had to get it to Ginger.  It worked.  The cure worked.

But she couldn’t get through the crowd.  They were pushing and pulling and they all wanted to see the syringe, wanted to see the cure.  Some wanted to taste it. Some liked the idea.  Some loved it.

The further she went, the closer she got to the door of Sam’s room, the thicker the crowd got, until Brigitte could no longer move.  She panicked.  She had to get through to Ginger, why wouldn’t these people let her through? She had to... she had to...

“Ginger... Ginger!” she called out, but her voice got lost in the noise.


	15. DirtyCutFREAK

Brigitte woke up to her own voice, one hand instinctively going for the syringe while the other gripped the nearest thing, which was her own knee, as tightly as it could.  All her muscles, aching and wanting rest, wanting a horizontal, preferably soft surface for her to lie onto, tensed up.  It took her a while to relax.  Her left hand ached especially and she felt how deep the cut on it went.

Her frantic mind latched onto that singular thought with all it had.  The cut.  The cut she had used to mingle her blood with Ginger’s.  The cut she had used to infect herself so that... fuck.

It was all for nothing, too.  She was infected, and it had all been for nothing.

The second thought captured her attention.  She was infected.  She was infected with whatever it was that had consumed Ginger.  The syringe in her pocket offered little comfort from this fact.  Self-conscious, she could almost feel it rushing through her veins, itching underneath her skin.  It was coursing through her veins, traveling her from the inside.  She had it.

The cure was in her pocket, so there was nothing to worry about.

 _I’m still surprised it didn’t kill McCardy,_ Sam’s ghost offered, _it should have.  I had no idea it would work this well._

“What are you saying?”

_Don’t you think it worked a little too well?_

“No.  The cure works.  It works.  It’s got to...”

The road seemed to stretch on forever and Brigitte, stuck in a seat by the window, watching it move around her, shivered at the thought.


	16. Almost There

As time went on, the trip seemed to stretch into eternity.  Her perception shifted and it seemed to her that the bus wasn’t even moving, or it was, but it existed on some cosmic hamster wheel where the same parcels of road were traveled in a vertical circle, their position remaining the same.  No distance traveled, just imagined.  The illusion of movement.

Fuck, she was going mental in there.

Her body ached for a horizontal, preferably medium-to-soft surface to lie on.

Sam’s ghost was still there.

_We’re almost there, Brigitte.  Not long now.  Just bear it and when you get there, you can rest._

“No.” she said, “No, Sam.  I can’t.”

_I’m dead either way._

“I’m so sorry.”

_Yeah well.  Bygones be bygones._

If only...


	17. Somewhere More

Her first step off of the warm, lazy bus plunges her right into the razor-sharp arms of biting wind and cold, and instantly she knows that she needs to be somewhere warmer.  Somewhere more secluded, away from curious eyes, not that there are many, but still.  For some untold reason she feels exposed, to the elements and to whoever might be looking for her... wait.  Where does that feeling even come from?

No time to dwell.  The faster she finds the place, the faster she can warm up, get her shit together.  Then, she can dwell on whatever she wants, maybe even cry, scream and feel raw emotion rip her to shreds.  But not now.

Exposed.  That’s how she feels.  So she goes inside, to the smell of the waiting area, of stale energy drinks, worn-out wood and old stone.  She approaches the counter, where a lady full of curly, gray hair asks her in that saccharine voice what she needs.

Bullet, she wants to say.  Gun.  To my head.

 _Remember what you survived for._ Sam’s ghost offers.

Motel, she says.  Nearest.  Preferably cheap, but she has no say on the matter and she knows it.  Just somewhere more will do.

The lady points her in the direction, describing the path as well as she can.  She adds that she doesn’t believe young ladies such as Brigitte should go to those sorts of places.  There are shadowy figures there, she says.  Shadowy figures.

Brigitte thanks her and leaves.  At that particular moment, there is none more shadowy than herself, and she knows it.


	18. Blood Runs Cold

The motel owner is a chubby, bearded man with what is nothing but a frankly impressive beer gut and a constant, unimpressed look on his face.  He looks Brigitte up and down.  That look alone tells her what she needs to know, that he figures her for a runaway.  Not inaccurate, but not it either.  Doesn’t matter.

“How much for a room?”

“You’ve got two options.  Either a ten a day and night, or fifty for the whole week, including weekends.  Package deal.”

Brigitte makes a small calculation.  She has about five hundred.  Ten weeks, if she doesn't do anything but stay there.

Something in her prods her, tells her that she shouldn’t stay there for that long anyways.  One week should do it.

The man, as if to prompt her to move, turns up the volume.

_“...from the Bailey Downs, where the urban legend, the Beast, has claimed yet another victim.”_

Her blood suddenly runs cold.

The news blurb shows a picture of Ginger.  Brigitte remembers the day it was taken.  Ginger had kept making faces at the photographer, until Brigitte had to beg her to keep still.

A not-so-fond memory.  The best she can hope for, now.

Brigitte digs into her pocket, pulls out a hundred, slams it on the counter.  The man asks her how long, she says, a week, up front, but doesn’t even hear the words.  Everything is focused onto this one little piece of information and the horrible feeling in her stomach.

The man gives her the key.  She turns around and runs to her room.


	19. Uncertainty

Brigitte slammed the door home and locked it.  She threw her bag onto the bed and scanned the room.  Alarm clock by the bedside.  TV on the mini fridge.  A stove and a kettle on it.  Thick curtains, good enough heating.  Bathroom.  Bathtub, sink, not too clean, but not as bad as she figured it’d be.  Everything in its place.

Now, to dislodge every single piece holding her together and to fall to pieces...

Brigitte took off her coat and took out the syringe.  She remembered that she didn’t have anything to expose her vein.  She sat on the bed and took off her bra.  Using one of the straps, she made a tourniquet and tied it onto her arm.  Copying what she had seen the doctors and nurses do, she slapped where her vein should be.

The syringe, full of purple salvation, was half full.

_Are you sure?_

“Not now, Sam.”

 _But you need to be certain, and I mean,_ sure. __

“I’m not.  But that’s not the point.”

_Brigitte, it’s poison.  It’s pure poison, especially in that amount._

There it was, the outline of a vein.  She had to hold the needle parallel to her skin to push it in.

_You can’t do it like this._

“I’d rather be dead than the alternative.”

_Living?_

“Lycanthrope.”

The prick of the needle, merely a sting, but cold and alien under her skin, ready to scratch her itch.

_Are you sure about this?_

“I’m not sure.  I’m not even sure this’ll work.”

She pushed the needle down.  The syringe was a quarter full when she stopped.


	20. I Hear the Drums

At first there was nothing.  She just laid there, facing the ceiling.  There was a crack on it, emerging from the base of the light fixture; a wobbly line across the otherwise generic surface.

Then, from within the preternatural silence of the room, she started to hear it.  The pounding of drums, a steady beat that was slowly rising, taking her away.  Beat.  Beat.  Beat.  Beat.  Beat.  Beat beat beat beat beatbeatbeat...

Then, pain.  Sudden, sharp, all-encompassing, enslaving and overwhelming her perception, dulling it to anything that wasn’t itself, anything that wasn’t pain.  Fire flowing through her veins, starting from her chest and extending to her fingers and toes, scorching every single sinew and muscle on the way.

She clawed at the pillow and stuffed it into her mouth to muffle her screaming.

The drums in her head, pounding against her temples were starting to hurt her as well.

Brigitte felt that the world had ended outside of this one bed, and the absolute darkness covering everything was the universe, fading out.  She was lying in the middle of the stray piece of existence, floating in nothingness, sole survivor, wallowing in perfect misery.  Nothing to see, nothing to feel, no Ginger, no Sam.  Nobody there.  Nobody left.

The drums were beating out of control, almost to a dissonant rhythm.

 _Oh shit_ , she thought.  _I’m overdosing._


	21. Head Spin

The spiral gradually headed downwards and she felt the existence-bubble of the bed expand and give birth to the universe once more, to the universe as she knew it.  The room, in all its dreary glory, all its desolation was still there, and so, she assumed, was everything else.

She felt the sweat on her brow and the rough, worn out bed underneath her.  She choked and realized that she had a pillow stuffed into her mouth, almost to halfway point.  After taking it out, she choked on her own saliva and started coughing.

A slight pain in her arm reminded her of the needle.  She reached and took it out.  She set it on the mattress, her head still reeling in from the experience, and tried to catch her breath.

Wait.  She had used her left hand to... the cut.  The dirty cut.

She looked at her palm.  There was a slight scar, but the wound had healed.


	22. First Sign

**That’s the first sign.**

Brigitte leapt to her feet and looked around.  There, casually leaning against the wall, wearing the black jeans Brigitte had gotten her for her birthday and her signature hoodie, was Ginger... no.  Her ghost.  Her hallucination, her waking dream... whatever the fuck it was.

“Ginge..?”

**Yeah, it’s me.  Not in the flesh, but... much as it can be, I guess.**

Raw emotion surged through her; loneliness, fear, sorrow, anger, and all the other things she couldn’t quite identify, that she didn’t know. To cope, she latched onto Ginger’s statement.

“What do you mean, it’s the first sign?”

**The curse, B.  That’s how it begins, ‘member? You heal up fast.  You’ve got the curse.**

“No.  This is just you fucking with my head again.  I don’t have it.  I used the monkshood.”

**Then how did you heal?**

That smug, lopsided smile. Brigitte could just punch her in the face, if she wasn’t half-sure she’d break a knuckle on the wall.

“It’s been a while since I left you dead in that room.  You healed fast when you were first bitten.”

**You’re saying, that _that_ was before the monkshood?**

“Yeah.”

Shrill laughter.

**B, seriously? You’re depending on a bunch of flowers to save you from the curse?**

“Wolfsbane, more or less.  It should work.”

**It should, huh? Well, are you sure that it does work?**

Brigitte had to admit that it was a valid question.  But how could she be sure? She looked at Ginger’s ghost, who rose a mocking eyebrow, questioning silently whether the little Fitz-sister had gotten the implication.

Brigitte understood.  But she didn’t worry.  This problem of uncertainty wasn’t anything a razorblade, some antiseptic, a bit of cotton and a few rolls of gauze wouldn’t fix.


	23. Lines on Skin

The bright, white lights overhead at the pharmacy stung her eyes and her body was begging her to stop this mad rush.  It needed, capriciously, rest and pampering.  A bath and some sleep.  Brigitte would have to agree with her body, but grinding it out a little longer to make sure beat sleeping her way into a one-way transformation.

Barely holding on, she ran down the list of the things she needed and started to collect them.  Gauze.  Antiseptic.  Alcohol-based something-or-other.  Cotton.  Syringes.  Small dose vials for when she’d make more monkshood extract, just in case.  She still had Sam’s stuff in her bag and a lighter, so she could cook up the cure.

One thing was missing.  There were no razorblades, just the shaving kind, and she didn’t want to struggle with the damn thing.  Resolving to figure something out later, she approached the counter.  The guy at the counter, watching the TV with sunken eyes, didn’t even look at her.  He just took whatever she had put on there and started to check them out.

“Hear ‘bout this?” he asked, apparently to Brigitte, “This woman killed a girl because her daughters had some issues with her.  Now that’s a fierce mom.”

That sounded a bit too familiar.  Brigitte looked at the screen.  It was Pam’s mugshot. Something knotted up in her stomach, just for an instant, and then the feeling vanished.

It meant that she was safe for the time being, and she had to be.

The guy turned his attention to the items to bag them and froze.  Brigitte felt her heart skip a beat.  Shit.  The moment lingered and then, the guy just said, “There’s this craft store a couple of shops down.  They sell scalpels, for scrapbooking and shit.  Great ones, too, cut through skin like butter.”

Brigitte just stared at him.  He lifted his hand and demonstrated his forearm.  Cuts, one after the other, lined his skin.


	24. Razor Sharp

Back at her room, Brigitte was almost ready.

This wasn’t quite the bullet in a gun scenario.  This was craft shop scalpel (what had they called it? An exacto knife?), in her hand, to her arm, the blood.  At least, her mental run-down of how it would turn out told her so.

Brigitte sensed that she was too tense for her own good.  She could cut too deep or bleed right out due to the tension.  She felt worn out and hey, she needed to get clean anyway.  She had, at least for the time being, gotten away.

She filled the tub with warm water.  As it filled, she put the scalpel and the antiseptic and the cotton by the bathtub.  When everything was ready, she simply sunk into it, her body gradually relaxing as she eased herself into the water.

Her muscles relaxed and suddenly she felt very, very tired.  But, much as she just wanted to close her eyes and laze, she had something else to take care of.

Her thin fingers grasped the cold metal of the scalpel.  Positioning it carefully so as not to hit a vein, she pressed the sharp tip onto her skin.  Shivered at the cold, small dot on her arm.

Clenching her teeth, she pressed it down and started to slice the skin.  All she could hear was her heart throbbing... and the sound of her blood dripping into the water.


	25. At the Edge of the World

Brigitte got out of the bath and dried up.  The room wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either, so she got dressed and wrapped a towel around her head.  Stray strands of hair got loose.  She went to her bag and retrieved her notebook.

Opened a blank page.  On the left space, she wrote **INCISION, TWO CUTS – approx. 14:43.**

She went to the next page and just wrote **50% dosage** on the left margin. That seemed an accurate assessment, she had taken half of what she had given to Jason, after all.

She closed the notebook and went for the bandages.  After wrapping her arm, she went to the bed and laid down.  Immediately, she felt herself drifting away, teetering on the edge.  It was as if she had, by deciding to rest, found the edge of the world and now was dangling off of it.  Her hands gripped the sheets.

_Shhh..._

His voice, his warm presence.

_Don’t worry so much.  You’ve made it, yeah? Rest._

“Stay.” She said, half-conscious.

_I’m not going anywhere._


	26. If

The uneasy dream of the greenhouse bash, of the choking crowd and direct injections ended as abruptly as before and she opened her eyes to the sight of the curtains, and the fading daylight outside.  Shit.  Panic gripped her for a second and she rose, how the fuck long had she slept?

The clock said, three hours.  Not surprising, all things considered.

Brigitte sat in the bed, not knowing what to do.  In her frantic rush, she really hadn’t considered anything beyond this point.  Getting away and finding shelter had been her concerns and now that she was there, what the hell was she going to do?

**Why don’t you play with your flowers some more, B?**

Brigitte looked to the door, and there Ginger was, with that smug smile on her face.

“Shut up, Ginge.”

Brigitte turned on the TV.  There weren’t many channels, but any news channel would do.  Letting it drone on in the background, she decided to take her sister’s ghost up on her offer.  Why not make more monkshood extract? After all, she didn’t know when she’d need it.

If, she corrected herself.  If she’d need it.

The feeling in the pit of her stomach protested that correction.  Brigitte ignored it and got to work.


	27. Assember, the Making of.

With grudging precision, Brigitte started.  She had just finished setting up what she needed on the table when Ginger’s voice interrupted her.

**You’re just wasting time now, B.  That shit’s never going to work.  It’s pathetic.**

“Shut up.  It’ll work.”

**Oh, and why is that?**

“Because I need it to work.”

She found the work mundane, distracting, and coupled with the constant, meaningless droning of the television in the background, annoying.  But she simply didn’t know what else to do.  It just had to beat dwelling on shit.

Brigitte separated the buds and, using the blunt end of her scalpel, ground them into the small boiler she used.  Using an approximation to measure the amount, she poured in the antiseptic, which the label said was ethanol based, into it.  She then used the stove, as much as she could, to heat it up and waited to insert the small bits of cotton she kept so as not to fumble for it.  When that was done, she soaked the cotton in and used one of the spare syringes to pull the liquid out.  She then poured it into one of the 8-mm screw-cap vials.  She cooked the cure in the amounts she took to be 100% dosage, same amount she had cooked with Sam twice beforehand.

All sense of time disappeared while she, as the assembler, made her cure.  In her mind, every time she saw a vial fill with clear purple liquid, she heard Sam say, _hey, without the greenthumb I’d be a total waste of space._


	28. Get Out

Ungodly inter-hours.  She hated them with a vengeance.  It was almost seven o’clock, and it was too early to sleep and it was too late to do anything.  After setting the monkshood to cool off in the fridge, cleaning the supplies and getting settled into her room, right down to attaching that photo of her and Ginger to the bathroom mirror, she had nothing to do.

The walls seemed to be closing in, and the floor was rising and the ceiling was slowly dropping.  There was this undeniable, unstoppable urge inside her.  She needed to go out, get out of the room.

 **See?** Ginger’s snide voice, **I told you.  You go mental all locked up.  Why don’t you go out there?**

“Someone might recognize me.”

**Nice try, B, but even I am not buying that.**

“It’s the truth.”

**No.  You’re just afraid that thing is going to be there.**

_Don’t listen to her._

Brigitte looked to the bathroom door, and there he was.  Standing there, hands in pockets, cigarette in mouth.

**Admit it, B.  You feel it.  You know it.  That shit’s not a cure.  You doomed Jason McCardy, and he is coming.  For you.**

_That’s not true.  Biology, remember? You took a giant bite out of it.  The cure works.  You saw it work on McCardy.  You saved him._

“Shut up, both of you!”

**See what happens when you shut yourself in?**

Grudgingly, Brigitte admitted that Ginger was right for once.  She got her coat and got out.  Three steps into the sharp cold of the night, and she knew where she was supposed to be.  The nearest place that served food.  She was ravenously hungry, and something inside of her knew just what for.

**How about a wet, juicy, yummy steak, B? You’ve got money to spend for so long as you’ll be yourself enough to spend it.**

She shrugged it off.  No.


	29. Devour

It didn’t take long for her to locate an Arby’s, and, despite the protests of everyone involved, go in.  It was the cheapest and fastest way she could eat, and she was desperate for anything edible, anything at all.

Brigitte barged right in and was greeted with the bright lights, cheap plastic-tinted oranges, whites and reds, the smell of fries and Styrofoam.  Perfect.

She just ordered whatever, didn’t even know what it was, didn’t care either.  Blindly, she paid, got her change, got her food, located the nearest table, sat down and started to devour it.

There was meat in it somewhere, tender, juicy, scrumptious, beautiful, delicious meat and every time it touched her tongue, the taste sent shivers down her spine.  She stuck more of it into her mouth, more and more, until her cheeks ached and her jaw strained under the pressure.  She couldn’t help it.

Ginger’s ghost, sitting across the table from her, watched her wolf it down and smiled.  When Brigitte was done with the entire meal, right down to the last stray scrap, she felt a sense of weariness.

But some part of her wanted to eat more.  Not of the patties and the fries and the rest, but the meat.  The smell of it was, however faint, in the air and distinguishable.

**Hunger pains, huh? Not a good sign.**

“It’s not like that.”

**Oh? And what is it like?**

“I’m just hungry.”

**Sure you are, you big suck.  Sure you are.**


	30. A Breakdown on the Way

Brigitte walked around the town, the name of which she didn’t even remember, trying to find out what was where.  She didn’t venture too far from the streets she had walked previously, in fear of getting lost.

She knew that, deep down, she was just avoiding the room.  She knew that whatever shit she didn’t want to dwell on were only kept back by avoiding that place.  But no sooner than half an hour had passed when her body demanded she rest.  In fear of just collapsing somewhere, Brigitte returned to the motel room.

She shut and locked the door and turned to face the empty, nondescript room.  The ache in her arm told her that her wound hadn’t healed.  The pain was a good sign.

Having no pajamas, she just stripped down to her underwear and got under the covers.  She pulled the quilt to her neck, curled up in a ball and heard just how loud the ambient silence of the room spoke to her.

The feeling of loneliness struck her suddenly and surely.

 _You’re not alone,_ Sam’s ghost, sitting on the bed, offered, _I’m right here._


	31. Monologue

“This is so fucked.” Brigitte said to Sam’s ghost.

_How is it fucked?_

“Here I am, talking to the local, fabled cherry hound...”

_So?_

“I wish you were here.”

Her voice was trembling and so was her lower lip. She felt so weak, so spent.  The sight of him, with that flowered shirt, that lopsided smile and ever-present cigarette simply sapped the last of her strength.

Desire, no matter how lately expressed or how questionable, real and there, and it was tearing her apart.

“I miss you.”

_Thanks, you’re not too bad yourself._

“You don’t think it is, though? Fucked, I mean?”

_Do you want me to?_

“No.”

_Well, it is kinda fucked, but... I think speaking to the local cherry hound is the most normal thing in this fucking mess._

Her lower lip trembled, but only for an instant and she saw his brow crease.  It was enough.

“It’s all my fault!”

She was on the verge.  Her armor was cracking.  She was breaking down and he, watching her, damn him, with that soft stare...

“We could’ve just cooked the cure up, injected me and blown.  We could have done anything, anything at all but no, I had to wait, I had to try and save Ginger, the selfish bitch who never spared a single thought to me except for when I admired her... I still tried to save her.”

_That was natural.  She is your sister._

“I tried to save her... save both of us.  I killed her.  I killed you... and I killed myself.  I did it.  I killed us all.”

_That’s harsh._

“No... it’s inevitable.”

_There, there._

He extended a hand, smiling warmly and she, barely holding on, just stared at him.

“If lycanthropes can exist, can ghosts too?”

_Heh... no.  Sorry._

“I don’t want you to be dead.”

_I know.  It wasn’t your fault._

“...can I pretend that you’re not dead?” she was almost hesitant, “Just for a little while?”

She could feel him smile.

_Yes, yes you can._

Brigitte closed her eyes and felt the sting of tears.  She laid down on her side.  She felt, or did she imagine, Sam slowly wrapping his arms around her.  She started to sob into the pillow.  Her tears trailed down, and she heard his voice, whispering.

_You know, come to think of it... I think I do think of you that way._


	32. Three Days Grace

Brigitte spent the next three days numb.  The days themselves blended into one another and made an incoherent mess of a whole.  Between having Sam’s ghost comfort her and Ginger’s ghost unnerve her, she kept blankly staring at the news channel, her heart skipping beats every time she heard the words _this just in_ or _tragedy struck_.

Amidst the rush of random information, she talked to Sam.  She had almost gotten used to the idea of his constant presence.  She knew that it was impossible for him to be there, especially not since she had licked the blood off of his corpse, practically...

But it reminded her of the afternoons she spent in the greenhouse.  Every time she went there, every time she made an entrance, his back would be turned, or he wouldn’t see that it was her.  This prompted him to make a comment in attempt to stonewall the interloper.  Once, near the end, he had even said he was sorry.

Brigitte had understood that everyone else only went there to buy shit.  The smallest amount of regret in her surfaced at that notion, as she had gone, mostly, to discuss the finer points of homeopathic treatments of lycanthropy.

She couldn’t deny that she loved going to the greenhouse.  Just to see him, to talk to him, even on that neutral subject... he made it seem so easy.  It came naturally to other people, Brigitte assumed, to communicate with others.  To him, it was nothing, it was insignificant.  To her, it meant the world.  There were precious little opportunities to discuss anything else, when the conversation wandered that way, with him leading her to the next topic.  Usually horror movies.

Brigitte remembered, and the faintest trace of a smile settled onto her lips.  She looked at Sam’s ghost, and saw him smiling back.  If only...

**Oh, B, you’ll want to hear this.**

Brigitte snapped back to attention and turned to the TV.  It had been three days now, there was no news, why this early in the morning?

_“...the authorities are baffled as this seems to be the first human victim of the urban legend, the Beast of Bailey Downs.  Jason McCardy, friend of the victim, was reported missing this morning.”_

**Grace period over.**

“Shut up, Ginge.”


	33. Contradictive

Brigitte rushed to the table.  She slammed her notebook onto it and opened turned to the page where she had recorded her incision.  Heart in her throat, she slowly unraveled the bandages.

Nothing but semi-clear skin.  The wounds themselves looked like distant memories.  She turned around and checked the time.

Oh, shit.

She took her pen and wrote down on the page next to her previous line: **56 hrs 12 min.  Healed.**

Some part of her interpreted not having a wound that ached and throbbed all the time as a good thing, while the survivalist in her scorned the idea.  The contradictive notion of healing being a bad thing had her on the verge of laughter.

Was the monkshood not working?

_Maybe monkshood by itself isn’t the answer.  Maybe there needs to be something more._

**Will you give it a rest? This isn’t going to work, this was never going to work.**

Brigitte stared at the line.  Almost three days, but it had healed completely.  But it was only a regular wound, why not try again, and with a little more of the monkshood?

It looked like a trip to the bathroom, to the scalpel and the antiseptic, the syringe and the pain to her.  Only this time around, she didn’t want to choke herself with a pillow.  She looked around for a substitute.  She would need to bite into something, but what? She didn’t have a belt, she didn’t...

The toothbrush lying by the clock caught her attention.  Huh.  Why not?

She took it.  Might as well get it over with.  Besides, she had the after-shock and then, she had to go to the library.


	34. Jeremy

The librarian’s name was Jeremy, a fact that he had announced after a full five seconds of staring at her from behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses.  Brigitte actually counted the interim period to see how long it’d take for him to stop ogling her and spring into action.  On the sixth second, he introduced himself and on the seventh, he rested.

Brigitte tried to ignore his intent staring and asked for books on homeopathic treatments and mythology.  Jeremy, in his bubbly, over-eager attitude that simply made her fear it was contagious, helped her along the shelves.  Brigitte looked at them, observed their titles and even read the back blurbs on some.  Most were new age bullshit, catalogues on weed and other entheogens, but some, however basic, might have had better yields.  When she was done, she had a small collection that weighed heavy.  She sat down, put the books up, one by one, and took a look through their titles.

_Herbs & Weeds: All You Need to Know about Homeopathic Medicine_

_Antitoxicants and Their Applications in Medicine_

_Purity Weeds: Natural Healer of Blood_

_The Book of Natural Homeopathy_

_Natural Homeopathy and Your Life_

_Herbology and You: A Natural Guide_

“Oh! Just wait, I have exactly what you need.” Jeremy just said and he disappeared.  Brigitte picked the _Antitoxicants and Their Applications in Medicine_ and started to read.  She had barely gotten past the first few sentences when Jeremy returned and, smiling, demonstrated two books.  Brigitte read the covers.  _Deadly Nightshade and Frog’s Breath_ and _Mythical Remedies in Literature._

“Cool, huh? I have a couple more if you’re interested...”

She wasn’t, and seeing as how he wouldn’t just fuck off and stop hovering, she opted for the check-out option.


	35. Black and White and Red All Over

Brigitte spent the next few days going through the books, one by one, swallowing every piece of significant knowledge up like it was her only nutrition.  She barely ate, as her hunger for a way out of what she feared was the curse fed her well enough, but her clothes stated, after a day or two, that she had to eat something.  So she did, ordered take-out and consumed more meat than she thought was possible.

The texts she had finished and was going over again and again told her one thing: she was fucked.

Some part of her, supported by Sam’s ghost, didn’t accept this.  Didn’t accept it at all, so she spent her evenings at the library for a post-cutting, after-hours reading session that always elicited Jeremy to suddenly start tidying up the shelves around her.  It was annoying and pathetic, frankly, but she had no choice.  She kept wearing out the books she had kept, going through them time and again and didn’t want to start carrying the entire library.

But all the reading she did still told her that she was fucked.  No two ways about it.

For one thing, even monkshood normally led to septic shock in full adults, and she, although still at what she had named the 50% dosage, was still alive.  Sure, she did feel immediate after-effects: crippling pain, despair, more lucid hallucinations of Ginger while the ghost of Sam was nowhere to be found, and often, a slip of consciousness, but she always woke up with the toothbrush still in lodged in between her teeth, but no septic shock.  She took it to mean that her metabolism was abnormally strong.  She was still healing better and faster.

One small comfort was that there was no further news of the Beast of Bailey Downs.  No news, in her case, meant good news.

Her baths were growing increasingly frantic as she became acutely aware that this might be the last time she could have a bath, or have enough sense of conventional hygiene to have a bath.  She tried to savor each bath, but each time, solitude escaped her and she was left with a tub full of water enslaved to entropy, and a scalpel waiting for her.  Every time her cuts healed, she took a bath at the end of which, she took the scalpel and cut herself new wounds.

She was spending almost every evening watching red drip onto white now.


	36. Growing Slow

Brigitte went over her log of wounds and healing times.

 

**50% dosage 42 hrs 23 min.  Healed.**

**50% dosage 32 hrs 15 min.  Healed.**

**50% dosage 26 hrs 15 min.  No marks.**

**50% dosage 23 hrs 10 min.  Healed.**

**50% dosage 18 hrs 41 min.  Healed.**

 

Fuck.

**You’re running out of time, B.  This isn’t going so well for you.**

“Shut up, Ginger.  I wouldn’t be in this mess if you had just listened to me.”

**You could have saved yourself the trouble.  You could have just given in.**

Brigitte ignored Ginger’s ghost and prepared herself a bath.  She soaked in it, welcoming the sensation, her mind latching onto the pleasantness of warm water for however temporarily she could forget about the curse, the cutting, the chart, everything.  It took her, she guessed, about five minutes to start getting uncomfortable.  Something was itching on her back.  Fear crept into her and she shivered, despite the very warm water, and reached around to the source of the itch.

Her fingers touched strands of hair and she froze.  In an increasingly more frantic pace, she started checking her body.  Hair under her ribs, on her inner thighs, the small of her back... small clusters, but long and defined.

The bath seemed to lose its fleeting allure right then and there.  Brigitte drew her knees to her chest and rest her head on her knees.  She was growing hairs.  She had the curse, and the monkshood wasn’t doing shit.

_I’m so sorry._

“I don’t want you to see me like this.” Brigitte said, avoiding looking at him, “I don’t want anybody to see me like this.”

She felt him close to her.

_Why? You look beautiful._

“No.”

**Try shaving it off.  It helps for about a day.  Then you discover that it doesn’t do jack shit.**

Brigitte reached for the scalpel.

“I’ll deal with the hair later.” She said, “Leave me alone, both of you.”

_You sure you don’t-_

“Yes.”

**Happy wounds, B.  Remember, wrists are for girls.**

As Brigitte started to cut her usual wounds she only had one thing in mind: she’d have to increase the dose.


	37. This Shit Will Fuck You Up

After her bath, she returned to the room, got dressed and started to prepare her usual kit.  She jotted down the incision time.  Then, on the next page, she scribbled, **100% dosage.**

Sam’s ghost was there.  He was pacing the room, going in a circle, fretting.

_No, no, no, think about this.  Think about this, Brigitte.  How does this make sense? Let’s find another way, there has to be another way._

“I appreciate the sentiment, Sam, but there is no other way.” Brigitte said.  She took a vial out of the fridge and took a new syringe.  She loaded up the entire dose.

_That’s going to fuck you up, you know it will._

“I can take it.”

_Why don’t you listen to me for once?_

Brigitte turned her back to him and went to the dresser.  Behind her, Sam’s ghost sighed.  She could almost see him running a hand through his hair in frustration.

_Just think about this.  You know what even the fifty percent does to you.  What makes you think the whole dose is gonna be a walk in the fucking park?_

“I never said it would be.” Brigitte said as she wrapped the bra strap around her arm, “It’s gonna hurt.  It may even kill me.”

His hands on her shoulders made her shiver.

 _It_ will _kill you._

“That’s what I said.”

Silence.  Then, he, reluctantly, asked; _Do you think it might work?_

“It’s all I have.”

There it was.  The vein.  She checked to see if she had the toothbrush near.  She did.

_What’s the point of it all, if you die here and now?_

“I’d rather die than to become that.”

Brigitte pushed the needle in and injected the cure.


	38. Shallow Blackout

Brigitte laid herself down and felt the bed swallow her.  The sea of ache welcomed her, and drowned her easily.  Sinking to the depths of it like a corpse tied to a stone, she shivered, curled up in a ball and bit into the toothbrush.

Her body spasmed.  Her legs jerked and her left arm sprung.  Her fingernails dug into her skin as she held onto herself.

She could hear the drums, beating out of control.

A guttural sound, first as a slow rumble and then as a full-on growl emerged from between her lips.  She felt her saliva drip down onto the bed, through the toothbrush, and pain wracked her body one more time.  She whimpered, wanting it to stop, wanting it all to stop, wanting just to be alright, wanted to hate life again instead of desperately trying to hold onto it.  Wanted to write the _no comment_ suicide note just for fun instead of trying to remain.

 _You are so alive,_ Sam said, softly.  _You are living, breathing.  I never understood why you seemed so morbid, why you seemed so fascinated with dead things when you had so much life in you._

Brigitte couldn’t speak.  Her throat was in knots and she was screaming into the toothbrush.

_You’re almost there.  Almost there, hold on._

**Hold on, B.  You’re getting there.  You’ll make it.**

Brigitte felt a shockwave travel through her body.  She felt her breath get stuck in her throat and then...


	39. Him and Her

Brigitte took the broken, papier-mache black orchid and put it in the black garbage back she was carrying.  Lying next to the fake flower was a fake pumpkin, one of the free ones.  She examined it.  It seemed to be somewhat crooked, leaning to one side.  She sighed, why would anyone want a lopsided pumpkin, anyway?

_I swear I see red cups when I close my eyes._

Brigitte looked at Sam, who, carrying a similar garbage bag, was picking up red plastic cups off of the floor.

_You’d think, that with all the bottles I found, people would have drunken their share off of the bottles, but no.  What would the world come to without these fucking red cups?_

“It’s a tradition.” Brigitte said, “Nothing personal.”

_Yeah well, still, thanks for helping me._

That stopped her.  Lucidity slowly emerged from within her and she dropped the bag.  Sam, almost aware of her reaction, turned to her.  Brigitte felt a lump in her throat.  This was a familiar emotion.  Sadness.

_Oh hey, hey, there._

Sam got to her side and she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer.  With her head to his chest, she could hear his heart beating.  They stayed like that for a while, Brigitte feeling his reality, his presence.  Why was she doing this, why was she feeling this pain in her chest? What was he to her?

_You okay?_

“I wish... I wish we spent more time together.  I wish we had more time.”

_We have now._

“It’s not the same.  Maybe not in a month or a year, but if I make it through this as a human being, you’ll eventually fade.  I won’t even remember what you looked like after a while.  I just...”

_I’m here.  I’m here with you._

One hand ran through her hair.

“You are probably the only person I don’t hate.”

_I love you too._

Brigitte sobbed and wished she could believe.


	40. After

When Brigitte came to, she was lying on the floor, her limbs in a twisted heap.  Her jaw ached from being clamped around the toothbrush, and it was a miracle the damn thing hadn’t buckled under the pressure. 

She felt like she had just taken a solid beating.  Her body hurt.  She used the bed to support herself and rose to her feet.  A sense of vertigo overwhelmed her and she sat right down, eyes shut tight, and tried to balance the world.  Her head was spinning, and there was a sense of creeping nausea.

Brigitte clenched her teeth.  Hold on, just hold on, another minute, another two minutes, another ten minutes and it’ll pass, just hold on.

The world slowly balanced itself and her body receded to an oblivious state of non-pain.  Brigitte breathed deep and took the toothbrush out of her mouth.  She savored every bit of the oxygen she could inhale and looked around.  Had she changed and destroyed furniture, ripped the curtains to shreds, anything?

No, but she had left dark spots on the carpet at regular intervals.  Blood from her wounds.  She checked the clock and observed her arm.  They weren’t as open as they had been, but didn’t seem too healed up.  She dragged a finger across each one, and they ached.  Oh, they ached wonderfully.


	41. From Bailey Downs with Love

“I think you might want to take a look at this.”

Brigitte looked up, her mind still in a book about leeches and blood purification rites that sat, open, on her lap.  The entire basis of alchemy, _solve et coagula._ Pure metals, creatures that fed on blood and...

 

**THE BEAST IS ON THE RUN**

Oh, please no.  Please.  She read the subtitle.

 

**Authorities chase the local urban legend of Bailey Downs out of town.  No comment on strange disappearances or the mysterious deaths at the Fitzgerald House.**

Fuck!

Brigitte snatched the newspaper out of his hand with such force that Jeremy almost jumped back.  She opened the article and started to read.

 

_THE BEAST OF BAILEY DOWNS used to be an urban legend: a monster that came at night and killed the dogs of the local suburbs of Bailey Downs.  It wasn’t until the disappearances of Ginger Fitzgerald and Jason McCardy that the Beast gained notoriety and today, after a three day manhunt for the Beast, the local authorities tell us that they have managed to find the animal (presumed to be a rather large breed of an otherwise typical Ontario grey wolf) and managed to push it out of the town._

_The Beast of Bailey Downs has, to date, taken the life of one Sam McDonald and Ben Coleman (age 15.) Whether or not the missing Fitzgerald sisters (Brigitte, age 15 and Ginger, age 16) or Jason McCardy.  Pamela Fitzgerald, recently incarcerated for confessing to the murder of local cheerleader, Trina Sinclair, had no comments and Henry Fitzgerald could not be reached for comment._

Brigitte scanned the page.  No picture of her, or Ginger.  Good.  At least Jeremy, too busy babbling on about how weird it was while hovering over her, wouldn’t ask her why she was hiding out there... or what she was hiding from.


	42. Hungry, Hungry, Hungry for More

Brigitte had dinner at a diner she found.  She munched soullessly on tasteless salad, avoiding meat altogether and trying to drown it all out in a flurry of vegetables mixed with milk.  The waitress, a bored-looking, middle-aged woman with short hair must have taken some kind of pity on her, because she kept giving her milk and small chips on which to munch.

Her stomach revolted to the very thought.  She knew from the taste on her tongue that she wanted meat, more and more of it, so much of it and raw... uncooked, pure from the source... she could just lash out at her, tear her throat out with her teeth and...

Shuddering at the thought, Brigitte munched on a lettuce leaf.

It’d feel so fucking good to just feel her windpipe in her mouth.  Like slurping up spaghetti, and she’d wash it down with a part of the four or so quartz of blood that’d be left of what’d spill out.

No.  Salad, she said to herself, salad.  Eat the fucking leaf and shut up.


	43. Keep Breathing

Brigitte unraveled the bandages and checked the clock.

 

**100% dosage.  16 hrs 23 min.  Healed.**

 

It was only a two-hour difference.  Might as well have been nothing at all.  The words “borrowed time” came to mind.  She scratched at the cuts, perchance to get an actual response, but they had healed to the point where it felt like scratching an itch, not clawing at a very recent wound.  Less than a day ago, she was bleeding from them.

She looked at the stacks of books on the desk.  Natural treatments, weeds, herbs, bunch of fucking leaves with no consequence, no help, no escape, no _cure.  No time._

In frustration, she slapped them off and scattered them onto the carpet.  That wasn’t enough, not nearly.  Growling, Brigitte rushed to the stove and took the kettle by its handle and, swinging it in an arch, threw it to the wall.  It just emitted a thud sound and bounced off of it.  Frustrated that it hadn’t made more of an impact, she took it up and slammed it, again and again and again, onto the wall until the paint was slowly chipping away.

A backwards swing of the kettle caught her on the nose and broke it.  Blood spilling out, Brigitte let go of the kettle.  Half-blind from the pain, she stumbled all over herself and fell.

There, in that contorted position, blood rushing out of her nose, Brigitte felt something well up in her and she broke into bitter tears.  Her sobs echoed hollow in the lonely silence of the room.


	44. Demon in Veins

After shaving that evening, Brigitte took to the scalpel with a vengeance and simply sliced at both arms with wild abandon, not caring how much was spilled.  They were all going to heal in less than a day anyway, sooner than the last time around, and what did she care if her arms looked like they had been through the grinder and her head was starting to spin? Fuck it.  None of it mattered.  None of it meant a damn thing.

She stayed in the tub, bleeding, crying and breathing until the water turned cold.

When she got out and dried herself off, Ginger’s ghost decided to pitch in.

**I know I said your flowers weren’t helping before, but B... this is helping even less.**

“Don’t you think I know that?” Brigitte snarled, “Nothing is helping.  Nothing is fucking helping.”

**Maybe there’s something you missed?**

“Why do you care? You want me to give in anyway.”

**Sisters.  We’re forever.**

“You’re dead.  We’re pretty far from forever right now.”

**Fuck you, too.**

Brigitte got dressed, but the thought stayed in her head.  Biology.  Something she could sink her teeth into.  It had worked so far.  Maybe she really had missed something.

_The ancients thought pure metals purified their blood._

They thought leeches did too.  What was the third thing?

The bandages on her arms, now starting to soak, reminded her.  Bloodletting.


	45. Apocalypse Later

Brigitte went to the diner sat down at her usual table and started to wait for the waitress.  In the distance, the kitchen doors opened and her nostrils picked up the scent of freshly-cooked meat.  She held onto the fork white-knuckle tight and tried to ignore it.  Eat the fucking leaf, she reminded herself, and shut up.

A waitress, a new one that she didn’t recognize came by and asked her with a non-committal voice, what she wanted.  Brigitte ordered two salads.  That was when the morning paper, tucked into her apron, caught her attention.  She hadn’t gotten any news that morning, so she asked for the paper.

While waiting for her salad, Brigitte flipped it open, her eyes searching for a few keywords on each page.  Wolf, attack, beast, bodies by the river, mangled by a wild animal, identical to a string of cases that has been cropping up along a single line on the map...

No.  Oh, no.  Oh, shit.

She quickly read the article.  What was now being called the Beast of Ontario on there, was supposedly a very large wolf... it wasn’t until the discovery of several victims who were killed in identical circumstances that the possibility of a singular culprit.

Brigitte read the names of the towns the Beast of Ontario had stopped by and memorized them.  Without waiting for her salad, she rushed out of the diner.  She had to go to the library.


	46. Slaughterhouse Road

Brigitte checked several atlases while an over-eager Jeremy constantly brought new ones, until she could probably use maps of Canada to enshroud herself.  When she finally found one suited to her needs, she used one finger to trace the towns the Beast of Ontario had visited.

Fuck... turning its own road into a slaughterhouse, where the cattle was the passerby, the Beast was coming her way.  It wasn’t in a straight line, but that was with good reason.  The damn thing was following the highway.  The route her bus had taken.

**Running is no good, B.  I think this proves that he found you.**

Brigitte couldn’t argue with that, but, then again, she didn’t need to.  All she needed to do was to pursue the only lead she had, blood.  Maybe she could find a cure there, and then, save them both.

Or she could just find her own way out and let the damned stay damned.  Hell, she couldn’t even save herself.


	47. Holes in the Void

After a stay in the library that was ended by Jeremy trying to be extremely nice about having to kick her out, Brigitte returned to the motel room.  She set her coat down and checked her arms.

Her heart sank.  She took her pen and wrote down her usual line.

**100% dosage.  12 hrs 16 min.  No marks.**

 

Faster, still.  However, a few books on hematology informed her of what bloodletting actually was: the draining of small amounts of blood in hopes of jogging the heart to generate better, cleaner blood.  Further, on average, an adult could lose two pints of blood before passing out.  She had never passed out before, and despite how red the entire bathroom appeared, she was sure she hadn’t hit that particular point yet.

Two pints it was.  She went to the bathroom, prepared the bath, lit her candles.  She got in and systematically shaved off the hairs that were growing all around her body.  Luckily, they didn’t grow back fast, but when they did grow, they’d full and developed.

After doing that, she took her scalpel and simply started to slice open clean skin.  When she had traced all her previous cuts, she simply added a few more.  She felt the pain of each cut, of the steadily warming, yet still cold metal sliding into skin, creating vales in her flesh.  The pain burning in both arms, she felt like she was digging holes in the void.  It wouldn’t matter either way.

When she was done, Brigitte leaned back and relaxed.  She watched the ceiling and bled.


	48. The Day of Rest

After she almost passed out, Brigitte got out of the bath, drained the water and took her syringe and vial.  She warmed the liquid up in the small boiler and filled it up.  She sat down on the toilet and after making sure the toothbrush was nearby, she took the bra strap and wrapped it around her arm.  The needle marks, along with the cuts, throbbed.  But a little pain was good, she knew that.

The cold needle pricked her vein and she had to push a little hard to get it in.  Then, she just pressed the plunger and felt the liquid fill her up.  She took the syringe out, tossed it, and placed the handle of the toothbrush into her mouth.

In a mid-paced crescendo, the pain, starting from her chest, slowly rose and spread into her until, for a while, all she could feel, see, hear, taste, smell and perceive was the pain.  Pitch black and bright red blending into one another.

It took quite a while for the pain to recede, and it left her breathless and spent.  She wrapped the bandages around both arms with trembling hands and then dragged herself to the bed.  Naked, wounded, tired and aching, she slipped under the covers and closed her eyes, some part of her mind taking the notion of sleep and cherished it.

She could, at least, sleep and wake up as herself.


	49. Lack in Resorts

The morning came grey and bleak and after a dreamless night.  Knowing that she had dreamt, inevitably, she tried to feel for what the dream might have been like.  The familiar smell of weed and cigarettes told her, Sam was there.

She got up, her bare feet treading the carpet, and went to her notebook.  Scratching her head, she opened the notebook and took her pen before unraveling the bandages.  Then, still numb from the stupor itself, she checked the clock and jotted down the line.

 

**100% dosage.  9 hrs 24 mins.  Healed faster.**

Some part of her didn’t even mind this anymore.  There was a small voice in her head, not her own, not Ginger’s nor Sam’s, telling her that this was inevitable.

It wasn’t that it was inevitable.  It was just her lack in resorts, that was all.  The inevitability was indirect.  It could still be avoided, she just didn’t have the means to do it.

This was so fucked up.

Brigitte started to laugh.  It seemed so intensely ridiculous, everything.  Injecting purple flower syrup into her arms, talking to ghosts, hiding out in this motel room.  Everything.  She laughed, her shoulders shaking, her voice scattering to the ceiling.  Her sides were practically splitting.

At one point, she had to breathe in, she was laughing so hard.  That breath took in everything funny about her situation and exhaling pushed it all out.  Brigitte started to sob and, still holding herself, cried. 


	50. Someone Anyone

As tears continued to stream down, choking her, she felt a sense of absence rip right into her.  A sense of lack, stronger than her sadness or despair.  What was missing? What didn’t she have?

“Someone...” she whispered, barely aware that she was talking, “...help me.  Anyone... please...”

She heard nothing but her own quivering voice begging for someone, anyone.  Anyone at all.

“Anyone...”

Nobody there.


	51. To Live is to Hide

Brigitte spent the aftermath of her next cutting session asleep to the sound of television for the first two hours.  When she couldn’t escape into rest anymore, she picked up her notebook and flipped through the pages.

**You can’t hide forever in here, B.  You need to make a move sometime.**

“I’m resting.  That’s all.”

**Yeah, sure.  Keep telling yourself that.**

“Shut up, Ginger.”

Flipping through the pages of her notebook, she came across a particular date she remembered.  Friday, 30th.  Ginger had killed Norman the night before.

 

_I CAN’T DEAL! Ginger’s really changing now.  I think she’s a monster.  She’s gotten so aggressive and her body is disgusting.  She’s like an animal – with long, hooked nails, brittle silver hair, a knobby spine.  Something is VERY WRONG.  Last night, I found Norman’s dog tag inside the toilet bowl._

_I also found out that she had sex with Jason.  It’s unbelievable that she lost it to that loser._

_I don’t know what to do.  Maybe Sam can help.  He’s different than the others._

 

Brigitte smiled at the warm thought.  Yes, he had been different than the others.  The notion filled her with enough motivation that she got up, got dressed.  Maybe she’d just go and have a cup of coffee somewhere.  She’d go out after checking her wounds.  She took her notebook and sat down.  She checked the clock.

 

**100% dosage.  7 hrs 43 min.  No marks.**


	52. Panes of Glass

Brigitte went to the diner and sat in her usual table.  From where she sat, she could see the street.  There were a few cars, not too many, not too few.  Blissful people, just walking around, going about their business.

Brigitte ordered coffee and sat there sipping it while watching the life that she had willingly detached from.  It felt like the world moving as she watched was just a hollow projection that moved on without her.  This would be how it would remain, she thought, after I’m gone.  The whole world will continue spinning and this street, this diner, all of this will still be there.  Only I will be gone.

She looked down at the cup of coffee.  There it was, black.  The liquid, only warm now, designed to alert her senses, to quicken her responses.  It did no such thing.  It just left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth.

Brigitte leaned back and continued to watch the world through panes of glass, wishing she could touch it like she used to and still be repulsed.  All the times she had said, out by sixteen or dead in the scene, united against life as we know it... all the times she had gotten close to death and had wished she could take that final step across the threshold... counting down the days left to sixteen, glad that her time was coming to an end...

In that moment, the world seemed to stand still and Brigitte found that the only thing she wanted was more time.


	53. Denial at Flood Stage

The sense of being on the brink, of having a lack in resorts draped over her a sense of lethargy.  Brigitte simply laid in bed, watching that little crack on the ceiling, imagining the Beast of Ontario moving along that wobbly line, headed towards the light fixture, where she was – a light, bright enough to blind her, slowly burning away the last of her fuel.

She did go to the bathroom in one last attempt to cut herself, wait until the blood loss brought her to the brink of losing consciousness and then inject another dose.  Her body reacted more violently than she thought it would, with her arms trembling badly enough to spill droplets of red everywhere.  Both of her arms had purplish needle marks on them now.  Some part of her thought it matched the color of her supposed cure.

Heh.  Cure.  What a fucking joke.  Calling it a cure was nothing but denial at flood stage – the dam was broken and the river would be unleashed, and soon.  Nothing could stop it.

She picked up the notebook and flipped through the pages she had practically memorized, out of having nothing else to do.  She came across two dried up branches of monkshood taped to the page.  It read, _This purple herb is going to save her._

How, she wanted to ask, this purple herb isn’t saving me.  It’s killing me, she wanted to say.

Ginger’s ghost came and tapped at a line on the opposite page.  Brigitte could have smiled, if she thought she had it in her.

_Ginger says “Killing is like SEX, she can’t STOP IN THE MIDDLE.”_


	54. The Living Dead

**100% dosage.  6 hrs 12 min.  Less scarring.**

 

Brigitte simply stared at the page.

**How’s it feel to be amongst the living dead, B?**

Brigitte had nothing to say to that.


	55. Lost Humanity

Brigitte slept.  She dreamt of the greenhouse.  It was quiet and empty.  The night after the bash and with all the pumpkins scattered onto the ground.  She herself was sitting at his work bench, a magnifying glass trained on a glittering black orchid.  A forgotten cigarette next to it, in an ashtray.

Suddenly, she felt his hands on her shoulders and his lips in her hair.  She shivered at his closeness.  She hadn’t felt anything like this before, and she just wanted him to stay there.

But his presence also brought with it a sense of foreboding.

“I was lost without you...” she said.

He didn’t say anything for a while, then, softly, he said:

_You know why I’m here._

Brigitte choked on the words.

“...I don’t want to know.”

_I’ve never been anything but honest with you._

“I don’t want you to be honest.  Lie to me.”

_I can’t._

“Just... play the cherry hound.  Play your part.  Don’t do this...”

_Why am I here, Brigitte? Tell me._

“Why?”

_Because you need to hear it._

Moment of truth.

“You’re leaving...”

_I can’t stay._

Despair.  She turned and grabbed his shirt.  The cloth twisted in her fists.  She didn’t know what else to do.

“Please don’t go, Sam... there is no-one else... I have no-one...”

_You still have Ginger._

“No... please, please...”

_The part of you that’s still holding onto me, the remote possibility of me, of someone else, is too weak to go on, Brigitte.  The wolf devours me first._

“Please, please, please stay, please don’t go, don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone, I’m all alone out here, _I have no-one!_ ”

_I’ll always be with you.  An eighth’s fifty, remember?_

Brigitte choked.  She knew what she should say and she knew she couldn’t say anything but.

“I don’t want any drugs.”

_Atta girl._

Briefest of brushes on her forehead.  His lips.  Or did she just imagine it?

_Now, be strong.  And amscray._

When she opened her eyes to the room, Sam was gone.  Brigitte knew in her heart that something she had been holding onto, that little purity in her, had left with him.

She cried herself awake.


	56. That Never Was

Brigitte roamed the room, pacing in the same circle she had seen Sam’s ghost walk.  Something in her, something other than the wolf, was churning.  There was a sense of foreboding in her.  She couldn’t explain it.  She took the notebook and ran down her incision and healing times.

From seven plus hours to six.  Only an hour’s worth of difference.  It was slowing down.  Maybe bloodletting was the answer, after all.  Of course, she was now bleeding out in dangerous amounts.

**‘think you can figure it out in time?**

“I have to try.” Brigitte said, “There’s nothing left.  Bloodletting has to be the answer.”

**Well, that, and you don’t have a lot of options left.**

Brigitte went to the bathroom and started to undress.  Ginger’s ghost followed her.  Brigitte ignored her sister’s presence and continued with it.  This was the only thing she had left, and even if it never had been the answer to this, even if it never would have worked, she had to try.  At least she would go down fighting.  That had to count for something. 


	57. Wolfsmond

“I indulge in the occasional bloodletting myself.” Jeremy said, smiling, hoping to make a connection.  Brigitte simply averted her gaze.  In that moment, though she would never admit it, she was acutely aware of how normal this thought was.  Girl meets boy, boy is clearly infatuated with girl, girl doesn’t like boy one bit and plus, girl has other concerns.  Sure, those concerns were slowly turning into a lycanthrope, but still.

“Okay, Brigitte Fitzgerald... Unfortunately you have quite the overdue account.”

It was clear where this was going.  All the books she had read the living shit out of back in the motel had their price, it seemed.

“Technically, if you have more than six dollars owed, I’m just...” he stopped when she turned around and started to walk away, putting on her coat.

She ran down the stairs and practically threw herself out to the biting cold of the night.  She started to walk in the path back to the motel that she could practically walk both ways, blindfolded and bleeding.  She knew it well enough to recognize those small irregularities in the piles of snow.  She looked up.  Nearly full moon.

She folded her arms to get a bit warmer.  It didn’t help by much, but it was better than nothing.  A few more steps and she stopped dead at her tracks.

In what she thought was a preternatural awareness, she felt something.  She looked around.  All she could see were the buildings, the street which was lit by dead white lamps, and the darkness where the lamps weren’t.

Through and through, she sensed it – something was moving in the night.  She quickened her steps, moving faster, until she just broke into a run, headed straight for her room.


	58. Nowhere to Go

Brigitte sat down and opened her bandages.  The wounds had healed.  She checked the clock.  It read **12:23.**

For the first time in a while, Brigitte felt pure horror course through her veins.  She calculated the interim period and her heart started to pound.  She bent down and wrote:

 

**100% dosage.  4 hrs 32 min.  Healed.**

 

She pressed one hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.  The line, absolute truth, was looking back at her.  Her thoughts focused completely on the line and she found herself being devoured by it.  End of the line.  No way out.  She wished she could run, but she had nowhere to go.

Brigitte remembered the silver bullet and gun scenario.  She hadn’t done that, hers had been the scalpel to her arm scenario.  She walked into the bathroom and took up her scalpel.  She pulled aside her hair and pressed it against her throat.

“Wrists are for girls.” She whispered.  Yeah, she was going to slit her throat.  The scalpel’s cutting edge, still sharp and willing to slice her skin open, remained pressed against her neck for a few seconds.  Brigitte felt herself stand on the line separating life from death, with the power to lean into any direction.  Her arm tightened as she tried to press the blade in... but her muscles tensed up and stopped her.

Her survival instinct, damn it, kicked in and she found herself unable to make the scalpel move.  She slowly moved it away from her neck and her fingers opened almost by their own accord.

The scalpel dropped and bounced off of the sink with a clink and stayed there.  She looked at herself in the mirror, looked into the eyes of the reflection.  There was nothing but despair in the face that soon wouldn’t even be hers anymore.


End file.
